This document has been written in order to simplify the
process of deciding which licenses are allowable for
documents that are to be included as part of the Open
Source Writers Group documentation set.

Rather than having a license-related debate every time a
new open-source or open-content license is introduced, we
here set out the basic "baseline" freedoms that each
license must include in order to be "free enough" to be
appropriate for use with documents that are associated with
the OSWG. This policy statement has been made as simple as
possible in order to avoid any future confusion or conflict
about what this policy entails. Under no circumstances,
however, should this policy be considered as "written in
stone". If there is sufficient demand by members of the
OSWG, this policy can and will be modified.

In this document, "documentation set" is a general term
that applies to the full collection of documentation,
papers, articles, books, FAQs, HOWTOs, and other written
material that is associated with the Open Source Writers
Group. Excepting for unusual circumstances, the full OSWG
documentation set will be included within the OSWG CVS
system available on the OSWG server. Where possible, OSWG
documents will be made available in multiple formats
including the original DocBook SGML source.

Any document that is to be part of the OSWG
documentation set must be released under an open-source or
open-content license that allows that document to be, at
minimum:

freely reformatted

freely distributed

There are a wide variety of licenses available under
which documents can be released, ranging across a whole
spectrum of possible levels of "freedom". The two
requirements listed above mark a point on that spectrum,
and any license that is "more free" (has fewer licensing
restrictions) is appropriate for use in the OSWG
documentation set. Any license that is "less free" (has
greater licensing restrictions) is not appropriate.

To put these licensing requirements in more concrete
terms, if you wish to have your document included in the
OSWG documentation set, you must release that document
under a license which, at very least, allows any other
person to take that document, modify its formatting, and
redistribute it in any form, including forms that are
intended for sale.

So, if a publishing company so desires, they can take
the entire contents of the OSWG documentation set, publish
those documents as a book, and then sell that book. This is
akin to the creation and sale of a Linux distribution by
companies such as Red Hat or Caldera -- they are able to
take Linux and a variety of other open-source programs,
package those together as a distribution, and sell that
package.

If you wish to release your document under a license
that has fewer licensing restrictions, that document will
be allowed into the OSWG documentation set. For example, if
you wish to allow others to freely modify, update, and
translate your document, you can release it under a license
that allows for this. This type of license is allowed (and,
in fact, strongly encouraged) for documents in the OSWG
documentation set.

On the other hand, documents released under licenses
that are more restrictive are not allowed to be part of the
OSWG documentation set. For example, a license that allows
for the free reformatting and redistribution of all
electronic versions of a document, but which restricts the
publication and distribution of that document in
print/hardcopy format, is not an appropriate license for
inclusion in the OSWG documentation set. You cannot include
documents in the OSWG documentation set over which you wish
to reserve exclusive print publication rights. One example
of a license that is not allowable for this reason is the
Open Publication License (OPL --
http://www.opencontent.org/openpub) when that license
includes Option B.

In the first requirement listed above -- that a license
must allow for a document to be freely reformatted --
"formatting" here refers to the presentation-related or
metadata-related aspects of that document. Formatting does
not include the textual or graphical content of the
document.